Memories with Teeth
by WhisperToMeSoftly
Summary: Bucky wakes up in Wakanda to find that T'Challa, Wanda, and Steve have come up with a plan to save him from HYDRA's control: Wanda will have to find a way to fix him from the inside.
_"Do you even remember them?"_

 _"I remember all of them."_

Air filled Bucky's lungs so fast that it hurt. He gasped, the cold carving through his throat like daggers, and he fought his restraints in a blind panic—

A warm hand pressed against his chest. "Buck. Bucky, it's okay."

His vision began to clear. Steve's face, right in front of him, looked concerned, and the corners of his blue eyes were crinkled with worry.

"Steve…" Bucky muttered hoarsely. He relaxed against his restraints. "Steve, I…how lo—" He coughed, his voice raspy and painful from underuse.

He could now see beyond Steve's face, and the room began to take shape. The scenery outside the windows was exactly the same as it was before: a bright, foggy overcast that flooded the room with light that hurt his eyes. He blinked, looking down at the deft hands of the nurse who was undoing his restraints. The absence of his left arm came as a momentary surprise, before he remembered.

"How long?" Steve said, finishing his sentence. "About 8 months. Did your cryo feel longer or shorter?"

"It always feels like nothing," Bucky rasped as Steve took his right arm over his shoulder and helped him to weakly step out of the cryo chamber. "Like nothing at all."

x

"This is definitely the best reception I've ever gotten after being a popsicle," Bucky said dryly several hours later with his mouth half-full of food.

"I'm sure," Steve said with a grin as he picked at his own plate. The meal was traditional Wakandan, with dishes of root tubers and beans that were a melt-in-your-mouth texture and deliciously spiced. Bucky couldn't remember the last time his tastebuds had felt so alive. "I tried to find some Carmello bars for you, but they apparently don't sell them in Wakanda."

Bucky bit back a half-smile at the mention of Carmellos. Steve had really paid attention when he went to Bucky's apartment. "How about root beer?" Steve shook his head with regret.

"They have amazing cuisine here, but no root beer. No pizza, either."

"What I'd give for some Lombardi's," Bucky murmured. "Do you remember the time we went out to get some pepperoni Lombardi's, and it turned into a downpour on the way back?"

"And the cardboard melted in our hands," Steve responded with a smile. "We ended up just carrying the pizza without the box all the way down sixth!"

"Has he told you the plan?"

Bucky flinched violently away from T'Challa, who immediately put his hands up in a placating gesture. "Shh, shh. I did not mean to frighten you."

"I—sorry," Bucky muttered, trying to lower his heart rate. He glanced at Steve, who had risen to half-standing and had that worry-crinkling around his eyes again. "You…you really are like a cat, you know."

"I can imagine you feel a little unbalanced so soon after being unfrozen," the king said gently. "May I sit?" Bucky nodded mutely, his eyes down, and T'Challa lowered himself gracefully onto the cafeteria bench.

He stared at Bucky intently, his eyes alight. "So: has the Captain told you the plan?"

"The plan for what?"

Steve leaned in, and Bucky turned to him. His eyes were also bright and intent. "To fix you, Buck. To make you better again."

x

The plan was to be implemented by two instruments: a device of Wakandan invention, and Wanda Maximoff.

"Wanda?" Bucky asked. "The girl with magic hands?"

"She's capable of telepathy and mental manipulation," Steve explained, and Bucky looked visibly upset at the latter. He quickly added, "She's very good, and very careful."

"Steve has been letting her practice on him," T'Challa said with amusement, glancing at Steve, who looked a little embarrassed.

"Yeah, she…she knows a lot about me now," he said with a grimace, rubbing the back of his neck. "Like, a lot. We practiced…a lot. I can barely look her in the eye now." He chuckled, and looked at Bucky. "But she feels really confident after all that practice. And looking through my memories of you helped her understand you better, which will help her navigate your mind."

 _Navigate your mind_. Bucky couldn't help but shudder slightly. He knew it wasn't true, but he couldn't help feeling he would just be trading one broken mind for a different one.

T'Challa seemed to notice his discomfort, and swiftly switched gears. "The device we invented to help her is based on a similar one of Stark's," he explained. "It senses trauma in the brain. It will allow Wanda to quickly locate where she needs to go without having to sort through every memory your brain holds. Much more efficient, and protects your privacy."

"The only thing is," Steve said hesitantly, "we'll need to…to calibrate the device. We need to, uh…"

Bucky started to feel a weight grow in his stomach.

Steve sighed, and looked him in the eye. "We'll need to say the words, Buck."

Ah, there it was.

He shook his head. He pushed his plate away from him, putting his palm flat on the cold table. "No," he said. "That's not—it's not safe. I can't lose control again, not here, not with you."

"Wanda said navigating the web of your mind could take weeks," Steve said pleadingly. "And in that time she might do more harm than good if she's wandering without a map. She said she wouldn't feel comfortable about what the procedure might do to you without this device. You were in cryo so long because we had to invent it."

"It's _not safe_ ," Bucky growled, his eyes locked firmly on the table in front of him. " _I'm_ not safe."

"And you never will be, unless we do this," T'Challa said in a low voice. "Your other options are to let the witch melt your brain into a well-intentioned puddle, or be a— what is it you said? —a 'popsicle' until the end of all days."

Bucky thought of the cliff this building stood on. He wondered if the fall would kill him. There was a waterfall pool nearby, perhaps he could tie himself to something heavy. He wondered if there were any firearms in the building, whether he could get access to them. A bullet in his brain would stop HYDRA.

His hand still lay flat on the table, slightly white-knuckled, and he felt Steve put his own hand over it. The warmth of his skin broke Bucky's train of thought, and he looked up.

"Please, Buck," he said. Those worry-crinkles around his eyes.

"On one condition," he said, pulling his hand back and locking eyes with Steve. "You have to be the one to say them."

x

No one at the compound had known the words until Bucky wrote them down. They were written on a napkin, inconspicuous, kept only by Steve. Bucky helped him learn how to pronounce the Russian, but very carefully. They practiced the words only three at a time over the course of a week and always out of order. Despite that, Bucky still felt a nasty twinge in the back of his head after they'd been practicing too long.

"Are you all right?" Steve asked worriedly as Bucky screwed his eyes shut and pinched the bridge of his nose after a particularly painful twinge.

"Yeah," he said after a few seconds. "Yeah, I'm…I'm fine. Let's just…can we not say _prorzhavevshiy_ any more today?"

x

"It is good to see you up and about," Wanda said with a smile, and Bucky knew she was sincere. Uncomfortable with her naked kindness, he simply nodded and looked away.

This was the calibration test. And Bucky was not feeling very upbeat.

It was the same room that had held the cryo chamber, although said chamber was now gone. In its place, he was sitting in a chair built with restraints, and allowed a royal assistant to fasten them. The straps went around his ankles, his chest, and his remaining arm. He struggled to relax.

Steve was pacing slowly on one side of the room, his arms folded and his eyes on the ground. T'Challa stood at a monitor, his fingers working quickly. Wanda was sitting in her own chair directly across from him. She was looking at him with concern—he shifted uncomfortably in his seat.

"The device is prepared," T'Challa said, gesturing to one of his assistants. The woman brought what looked like a headset over to the restraint chair, and placed it around Bucky's head. The technology was jet-black, with one or two very tiny blinking lights, and bent into a half-oval that fit just around the back of his head. A strap went over the top of his head to keep it fixed. The ends of the half-oval pressed lightly against his temples, and the metal was cold.

"Are you ready?" Wanda asked carefully. Steve stopped his pacing to glance over, and T'Challa paused in his typing.

Bucky felt their gazes and felt his throat closing up. He hadn't been able to sleep the night before—too many visions of killing Wanda, of killing T'Challa, of killing Steve. Of rampaging through the royal compound like a hurricane, leaving blood and bodies in his wake. Of waking up to himself, to the aftermath, and tearing the compound apart looking for a gun.

Too many visions of what it might feel like, to be shot through the head.

All he could do was nod.

Steve dragged a chair next to Wanda, and pulled the worn and wrinkled napkin out of his chest pocket. His hand shook slightly. Wanda's fingers and irises began to glow red. Bucky gulped, and closed his eyes.

" _Zhelaniye_."

He felt the first twinge.

" _Prorzhavevshiy_."

 _No_ , he mouthed. _No._

" _Pech'_."

Every muscle in his body tensed, pressed against the chair, against the restraints.

" _Rassvet_."

He began to moan. His teeth hurt from clenching them so hard. His thoughts became only of pain.

" _Semnadtsat'_. _Dobrokachestvennyy_."

He began to scream.

Steve leapt to his feet, although Bucky was no longer there to perceive it. T'Challa grabbed Steve's arm roughly: "Finish it!"

" _Devyat'._ " Steve's voice was breaking. Wanda was beginning to gasp and pant, red plumes of magic twisting violently around her fingers, her eyes blazing ruby. " _Vozvrashcheniye domoy_."

Bucky's screaming was agonizing, almost half-sobbing. He thrashed against his chair so violently the legs rocked against the floor.

"Finish it!" T'Challa bellowed at Steve, who cried desperately:

" _Odin! Gruzovoy!_ "

Bucky's last scream faded as abruptly as his thrashing did. He sat there, breathing hard. Wanda was visibly shaking.

Steve didn't know if he was capable of speech. He walked over to Wanda and knelt beside her chair, looking up into his best friend's face. He recognized the blankness, recognized the dead eyes. They turned his veins to ice. When he tried, the word came out almost as a whisper. " _Soldat?_ "

Bucky—the Winter Soldier—did not look at him. The dead eyes stared straight ahead, and a low growl said: " _Gotovy soblyudat'_."

Steve let out his breath in a trembling sigh. "Wanda?" he murmured, turning to her.

"I don't know how to bring him back," she breathed, her mouth open in concentration, her eyes locked on the soldier in front of her. "I don't…I don't know if I can."

"Try," Steve implored her. "There must be some way you—"

With a roar, Bucky ripped through all four restraints and grabbed Steve's neck faster than anyone could react. Steve gasped, scrabbling with his fingers at Bucky's hand, staring wide-eyed into the Winter Soldier's dead and deadly gaze, while T'Challa launched himself at Bucky with a warrior's cry and wrapped his arms around his neck. Bucky pitched Steve across a nearby operating table, freeing his only hand to rapidly punch the king's face until—

"NO STOP," Wanda screamed, throwing her hands out at Bucky. He collapsed in an instant, like a marionette toy, bringing T'Challa down with him to the floor with a _thud_.

For a moment, no one moved. The room was filled only with heavy, shaky breathing. Wanda's arms remained outstretched, her face horrified. T'Challa rolled onto his back with a deep sigh to catch his breath. Steve lay on the floor behind a broken operating table, staring into the unconscious face of his friend, who now looked as peaceful as he had looked in cryo.

x

"The test was a success."

"The next person to say that to me is gonna lose some teeth," Bucky muttered, looking away, and Steve sighed.

"Well," he said, with a little bit of a shit-eating grin. "I did much prefer being choked by your real hand than your other one."

Bucky glowered.

"Wanda got exactly what she needed. She admits that being in a state of activation made you difficult to manipulate, much more difficult than she planned, but she said it was promising that she was able to stop you…"

Steve continued to talk, but Bucky wasn't listening. Instead he was looking at Steve's neck. He remembered having his hand around it. He remembered wanting to squeeze the life out of it. He remembered the hatred. But it wasn't just a memory—it was also the present. He could feel that hatred here and now. He could feel the desire to kill Steve without having any desire to act upon it. It was disconcerting and terrifying.

"…and the real thing should be a lot easier," Steve was continuing, "especially now that we've—"

"How many times, Steve?" Bucky interrupted quietly. Steve froze.

"How many times what?"

Bucky gripped the sheets of the hospital bed with his good hand. "How many times do I have to hurt you before you realize I'm not worth it?"

Steve paused for a moment. Bucky saw the worry-crinkles forming in the corners of his eyes, before the corners of his mouth turned up in a sad smile.

"A lot more times than you have, Buck."

x

The chair had been refitted with metal restraints, even though they weren't planning on using the words again. Bucky had insisted.

The metal of the restraints was freezing cold against his chest and wrist and ankles, and as they put the headset on him, its chilly contact against his temples was enough to make him shiver.

Steve placed a firm, warm hand on Bucky's shoulder. "Are you ready?" he asked. Bucky took a deep breath and nodded.

Wanda sat across from him again, looking at him with a bit more fear than she had before. This actually made Bucky less uncomfortable than her concern had.

"Close your eyes," a nurse said, approaching him with a needle. "And try to relax." Bucky didn't look as she injected the inside of his elbow with a clear liquid, feeling the pressure of the needle as she pulled it out. A sudden warmth spread from his arm to his shoulder to his chest and all through his insides. A calming warmness.

His eyelids were suddenly incredibly heavy, but he fought to keep them open long enough to lock eyes with Steve.

Those damn worry-crinkles. That damn shade of blue. Bucky tried to make a jab that all that worrying was going to turn Steve's hair grey, but he couldn't muster the energy to make the words.

"See you…on the other side," he managed with a weak smile before everything faded to nothing.

x

Wanda and the Wakandan device were good friends. As soon as she stepped into Bucky's mind, she reached out for it, finding its familiar presence. If she had to describe what it felt like to navigate someone's mind with the device, she would probably say it felt like following breadcrumbs. She could feel all the breadcrumbs as if they were glowing lights in the dark, and their glow illuminated dark, impenetrable corners.

One of the first things she noticed was that some of these corners had teeth.

In Steve's mind, when they had practiced, the dark corners of his mind that had been illuminated by the device were passive. They were simply bad memories, nightmares, mostly traumas from the war. But this was not Steve's mind. There were passive dark corners, yes, and many of them: darknesses that simply sat there and brooded when she touched them with her mind. But there were other corners that, when she touched them, snapped violently back.

It seemed very clear what she had to do.

x

The music was light and bouncing, with bright horns and a colorful piano melody. The lantern light made the French club glow in sepia tones. (She knew it was a French club the same way you always know things in dreams. She also knew it was 1944.) The room was full of soldiers and women in pretty dresses, whirling and dancing and standing at the bar with drinks and laughing.

This was a happy place.

Wanda reached out with her mind again to the memory and found it biting back. This was a conditioning memory, although she couldn't tell why. There was nothing dark about this scene. People were laughing, dancing. She felt happy in her heart, which meant Bucky must have, too. She got lost in the dancers, found herself automatically moving towards them, to join them, to bury herself in the memory—but before she could lose herself, a particularly loud roar of laughter brought her attention to the table in the corner, where one man was brighter and clearer than all the others.

If she hadn't recognized the young James Buchanan Barnes from Steve's memories of this era, she never would have recognized him at all. His face shone with youth, with boldness, with glee and joy. His hair was cut short in a military style, and he was perfectly clean-shaven. He was breathtakingly handsome.

"You're an old man," Bucky said across the table as he dealt cards, his voice both challenging and affectionate. "You can't possibly beat this brilliant young mind!"

"I can beat a teenager any day of the week!" the man cried back, as Wanda wound her way around the table. There was an empty seat next to Bucky, and she sat in it hesitantly. No one even looked her way.

"I'm twenty-seven!" Bucky crowed, his face bright with laughter. The entire table erupted in hilarity and denials, cries of "baby-face" and "puppy." "Check my birth certificate!" he bellowed back, throwing his cards to the table. "Born in 1917! That's _ONE-NINE-SEVENTEEN_."

The numbers were not said in his voice, or in his language, but in Russian.

 _ONE._

 _NINE._

 _SEVENTEEN._

The sepia light turned to dark grey. Wanda felt her skin turn cold and clammy. The laughter vanished from the room like a candle snuffed out, and every person's smile vanished. She turned quickly to Bucky, only to find that his face had gone blank. His eyes had gone dead. She whipped around to the others, but everyone wore the expression and the gaze of the Winter Soldier.

The room was dead silent.

Wanda could hear herself breathing, could hear her heartbeat in her ears. This was not like one of Steve's memories, not like they had practiced. This was…this had a life of its own.

The soldier on her other side turned to her so quickly she almost screamed, and muttered, " _ONE._ "

" _NINE_ ," said a soldier across the table, his eyes boring into her.

" _SEVENTEEN._ " The old man who called Bucky a teenager was as gaunt and white as a dead man. These numbers, these were the words. They were part of Bucky's words!

A woman who had been dancing with a soldier nearby grabbed Wanda's arm, and her skin burned her where it touched. Gasping, Wanda snatched her arm away, standing up and quickly backing towards the door.

She stopped abruptly when she heard Bucky's voice. "One," he murmured quietly. She looked at him, but he was as dead-eyed and blank as ever. "Nine. Seventeen."

Everyone in the room was still as statues, looking at her. Their faces were pale and skeletal. She stood in the doorway to the bar, feeling naked and afraid. She had no idea what to do, and her heartbeat was only getting louder in her ears.

 _Wanda_.

Bucky. But when she looked over at the young James, he was still staring blankly in front of him. It looked like he hadn't said a thing.

She took a deep, shaking breath. This was her job. She had promised Steve. _Promised_ him. He had looked so happy, so hopeful, even though he tried to hide it. And with the strength of that promise, she gathered her magic, and raised her arms.

"This is a happy memory," she whispered, red tendrils forming around her fingers and slowly spreading into the room. "This is the memory of something good." Her magic slowly turned the grey to sepia. The lanterns came back on at the touch of her mind. The people began to move under the light, the music slowly resumed.

Slowly, and with great effort, she chased away the grey.

"One-nine-seventeen, that's what I'm tellin' ya!" Bucky was saying emphatically, jabbing a finger in the old man's direction with a grin. "But I could beat you when I was _twelve_ , ya old coot." The men at the table hooted with laughter.

Wanda still stood in the doorway, her arms now at her sides, trying to catch her breath. She reached out to the memory with her mind, and found nothing dark about it. The device's breadcrumbs had vanished. And nothing bit back.

"How many words were there again?" she muttered to herself, turning to walk out of the bar. "I hope it's fewer than I'm remembering."

x

Several of the words were much easier. _Rusted_ was a memory of an abandoned railway car that 8-year-old Steve and Bucky had played in as children. The memory was already so happy and innocent; it hadn't been corrupted as violently as the first. She had hoped that _freight car_ would be grouped into that memory the way _one,_ _nine,_ and _seventeen_ had been, but she had been strangely mistaken.

 _Daybreak_ had also been a good memory. It was shortly after Steve had rescued Bucky and the rest of the prisoners from a HYDRA camp, and they were walking by foot through the night to get back to Allied lines. Steve and Bucky walked at the head of the group, mostly in silence. Wanda could feel the sense of safety, the sense of reassurance that Bucky felt at having Steve next to him. She could feel the strength it gave him.

And when the corruption of the memory surfaced with the mention of the trigger word (the men started dying, one by one, bleeding from the mouth while Bucky looked on with a dead-eyed stare), Wanda simply drew on that sense of strength and safety that Steve brought to Bucky. The teeth of the memory faded quickly and easily, and the men marched on into daybreak.

 _Homecoming_ brought something different. When Wanda stepped into this particular dark corner—a small apartment, lit by a single window, with a wisp of a woman cooking by the stove—she noticed that nothing was clear. Everything had a fuzziness to it, a vagueness. It felt like when she looked away from something, it vanished from existence. Then she looked back, and it was there, blurred and unclear.

The door to the apartment opened, and Wanda turned. There stood young James, looking handsome and strong, his lines painfully clear compared to his surroundings. He only had eyes for the woman at the stove, who had dropped a plate at the sight of him and ignored its shattering on the floor.

"Ma," James choked out, dropping his bag. The woman made a cry that sounded somewhat like a sob or a wail, and ran at him with arms wide open. He caught her, wrapping his arms around her, and they buried their faces in each other as they both wept openly.

This never happened, Wanda thought. Bucky never came home.

This…is not a memory. It's a fantasy.

The woman pulled away from Bucky, holding him tearfully at arm's length. Bucky brought one of her hands up to his cheek. "My beautiful boy," she whispered. "My beautiful son. What a wonderful _HOMECOMING_."

But something wasn't right. Bucky's face was slowly going blank. Wanda felt goosebumps, knew what would happen before it did—when Bucky pulled a knife from his belt and ran it though his mother's stomach.

" _NO!_ " Wanda screamed, unable to help herself at the sight of such pain, such tragedy, the horrified look on the mother's face as she crumpled to the ground in a pool of blood. Bucky looked at her with something like contempt.

Wanda felt her eyes burn with tears. She didn't know how to fix this. This wasn't a memory, there was nothing to restore it to. It had been a daydream of Bucky's, a fantasy, something to comfort him when he was at war; they had torn it to bloody and horrifying pieces. It was heartwrenching, impossibly cruel, and Wanda couldn't handle it.

She had to destroy it.

Holding back sobs and forcing herself not to look at the corpse on the floor—young Bucky hadn't moved, but remained staring at it with the bloody knife in his hand—her fingers glowed red as she gathered her magic. She wound it into a pulsating ball, around and around, her hands whipping in graceful, practiced circles. The ball of energy grew and grew.

Young Bucky looked at her. She stared back.

And with a cry, she released it.

x

"If you do not stop pacing," T'Challa said, "I will bring in a restraint chair for you as well."

"It's been six hours," Steve said impatiently, folding his arms and forcing himself to stand still. His foot began tapping. "And nothing has happened besides the occasional heart rate spikes, until Wanda started crying."

Wanda was indeed sitting in her chair, her open and unseeing ruby eyes wet, tears streaming steadily down her face. Bucky sat still in his chair, eyes closed, looking for all the world like a man asleep.

"They spent years breaking his mind," the king said, placing a hand on the Captain's shoulder. "Perhaps it is arrogant of us to think we may spend only hours repairing it."

x

 _Benign_ was the next breadcrumb Wanda found. She was in a hospital, and she saw Steve and Bucky sitting next to each other in the waiting room. Bucky had a reassuring hand on Steve's back.

"Your mom is strong."

"She's always been sick, Buck," Steve said sadly. "I've never known her not to be sick."

"She's strong at _heart_ , Stevie. That's most important," Bucky said confidently. But Wanda could feel what Bucky felt, and she knew he just felt sad. She could also feel the intense need to protect Steve. The intense need to keep him safe from all harm, including grief.

A doctor walked towards them, and Steve stiffened. Bucky wrapped an arm around his shoulders. The doctor's face was vivid in Bucky's memory, and it was the face of someone delivering bad news. Steve looked broken. "It…it wasn't _BENIGN_."

Wanda didn't wait to see the corrupted memory. She simply drew on Bucky's need to protect Steve—an impulse so incredibly powerful, it nearly overwhelmed her—and used it to restore the memory with a simple wave of her hand. Then she left.

x

After that came _longing_ (Bucky's first crush at age 13, an easy memory to correct), and after that came _furnace_ (a Christmas memory, of a young Bucky and Steve exchanging presents around the warm furnace in the basement of Steve's apartment building: also easy to correct). Wanda was starting to tire. Her magic did not come to her as easily, and she found she could not sustain it as long. Her fingers and hands started to tremble with the effort. She dreaded the last word.

Especially since its teeth were a lot more powerful than those of the others.

She stepped into a freight car, and was startled to see Bucky in front of her. It wasn't the young Bucky—it was Bucky with long hair, with a scruffy beard, with a complete metal arm. The snowy and biting wind howled around the room, entering through a huge ripped hole in the side of the car. It was at this hole that Bucky stared, although Wanda's view was blocked by crates—

" _BUCKY!_ "

Wanda started at Steve's voice, although Bucky didn't react. She moved towards him, trying to see what he was staring at—and recognized the scene immediately.

This was also one of the dark corners of Steve's mind.

Captain America was crouching near the open hole in the side of the car, the freezing wind buffeting his hair, his arm outstretched as far as it could reach.

"HANG ON!"

A young Bucky Barnes was hanging onto a handrail at the end of the ripped metal, his face terrified, his body dangling dangerously over the impossible drop. Wanda turned to look at the Winter Soldier, who stood watching, but she could not read his face.

"GRAB MY HAND!"

Wanda placed a hand on his metal arm. To her surprise, he looked down at her with recognition in his eyes.

"You're really here," he said, and Wanda realized that this was truly Bucky. Every Bucky she had met so far, even the Bucky currently facing a deadly fall out of Steve's reach, was simply a representation. They were part of the memories. They were parts of Bucky's mind.

But this man in front of her…this was James Buchanan Barnes.

"NO!" Steve screamed, and Wanda turned just in time to see Bucky fall. And suddenly she was struck by what he felt—a great and massive terror.

She gasped, a hand to her chest, and the Bucky next to her put a hand on her arm to steady her.

"This is…they didn't corrupt this memory," she gasped, still trying to quell the terror that the falling Bucky had felt. "It was…they didn't need to."

Bucky was looking at her with something like sadness, something like pity. As she caught her breath, she realized she didn't know how to fix this last, most powerful memory. There was nothing corrupted, nothing to correct. He remembered it exactly how it had happened, exactly how Steve had remembered it. There was nothing new here.

" _BUCKY!_ "

Wanda jumped and spun, and realized that the young Bucky was back on the handrail, gripping it with one hand for dear life, and Captain America was desperately reaching for him.

"HANG ON!"

The scene was repeating. She looked at Bucky next to her, and he was simply watching as he had before.

"GRAB MY HAND!"

Young Bucky tried, making a swinging grasp for his friend—and even though Wanda had watched it before, when the handrail broke and the young Bucky plummeted into the howling snow, she felt the same anguish as she had when she'd watched it the first time.

"NO!" Steve screamed.

"Why are you doing this?" Wanda whispered in horror. "Why do you do this to yourself?"

"I'm not the same after this," Bucky murmured, his stony eyes locked on Steve's back. "This is…this is the last time I'm myself. I'm not the same."

He turned to her then, and to her great shock, he was crying. "I'll never be the same," he said hoarsely, his voice cracking.

" _BUCKY!_ "

"That's okay!" Wanda cried, gripping his metal arm despite not even knowing if he could feel it. "It's okay that you're not the same! We all have experiences that change us!" But Bucky was shaking his head.

"HANG ON!"

"I died here, and I never came back," he said. "I'll never come back, this is the end of me."

Wanda grabbed both his shoulders and spun him around to face her. "It is NOT the end!" she shouted over the howling winds.

"GRAB MY HAND!"

Bucky turned to watch, but she grabbed his chin and forced him to look at her. "This place has teeth because you let it!" she bellowed. "You give HYDRA its power here! Why do you stay?"

"Where else would I go?" Bucky said sadly, and he wrenched his face out of her hand to watch himself fall, as Steve screamed in anguish.

Wanda let go of Bucky's shoulders, and furiously called up the last of her magic. It began to billow around her in blood red swirls. "Take me to your happiest memory after this," she commanded, her voice echoing throughout the train car, her eyes blazing red. "Leave this place. Take me to your happiest memory _as you are now._ "

Bucky blinked at her.

Captain America vanished. The train began to slow. The winds quieted down. Wanda released her magic with a sharp sigh, her arms dropping to her sides.

"Okay," Bucky said. "Let me think."

x

A young girl in Bucharest pulled on his jacket hem. Bucky started, defensive, but she only held up a flower. " _Happy May Day!_ " she said in Romanian with a baby-toothed grin. Bucky took the flower, and felt himself smile.

And Wanda knew, the same way you always know things in dreams, that this was the first time Bucky had smiled since 1944.

x

" _You look lost, young man._ " Again in Romanian, but since Bucky understood it, Wanda understood it.

Bucky had just come out of the grocery store with a single loaf of bread, a jar of peanut butter, and completely empty pockets. The old woman was sitting on a bench beside the door, looking at him thoughtfully.

Uncomfortable with her gaze, Bucky stuttered. " _I'm, uh, I'm not lost, I just—I live around the corner._ "

The woman shook her head. " _That is not what I meant._ " She bent over, lifting a cloth that lay over a basket at her feet, and brought out a small tartlet. She held it out to him. " _Until you find your way, maybe having something sweet will lift your spirits_." And she smiled at him.

And Wanda knew, the same way you always know things in dreams, that this was the first time Bucky had been shown true kindness since 1944.

They walked out onto a balcony overlooking the Wakandan forest. Wanda had never been on this balcony, but she recognized the building, and the waterfall in the distance. Steve stood at the far end of the balcony, arms folded, looking out into the mist.

Bucky glanced at her, and then walked forward, putting his only hand awkwardly into his pocket. Steve, hearing him approach, turned and smiled.

"Hey Buck," he said with affection. "How are you feeling?"

"Good," Bucky said, joining him at the railing. "Okay."

"I'm glad to hear it," Steve said, clapping a hand on his shoulder. Bucky looked up at him, and the pure sincerity on Steve's face felt a little like a punch to the gut. "Don't worry. We'll get you fixed up soon."

Bucky shifted his weight from side to side once or twice. He bit his lip. Wanda felt his discomfort, his shame.

"Wakanda's beautiful," Steve said, leaning on the railing as if he could press himself closer to the view. "I can see why they wanted to be closed off to the world for so many years. I can see why they wanted to protect this."

"I'm going to go back into cryostasis."

There was a pause. Steve turned his head to look at him. "What?"

"I…have to," Bucky said, focusing his gaze on a particular rusted spot on the railing. "It's the best choice, really. Until you figure out how to get HYDRA out of my head."

"Buck, that's not necessary," Steve said with force, turning towards him, but if anything Steve's conviction only strengthened Bucky's.

"It is," he stated, turning to face him. "Steve, I can't…I can't live like this. I can't live every day wondering when will be the next time that I try to kill you all."

Steve smirked a little. "You haven't got me yet." But Bucky frowned.

"I know," he said. "I honestly doubt I could kill you if I tried. But…but I can't stand that I want to, Steve. I can't stand the memory of hating you, of wanting you dead. I can't stand that HYDRA is still here, infecting me, making me feel like I have to stay away from you to keep you safe. All of you." Bucky rubbed his hand absently along the metal rail, painfully conscious of Steve's gaze on him.

"You know Howard was the only person I ever killed that I actually knew?" he said quietly. "I didn't realize it at the time. It hit me a few months after I left you in DC, when I was trying to make sense of everything."

Steve remembered the journals in Bucky's apartment, every page filled with writing, with sketches. "Howard remembered you."

Bucky's hand clenched around the railing at the memory. "He said my name," Bucky said. "He said 'Sergeant Barnes,' and that name just passed right through me like I was smoke. I'm sure he died—" His voice broke. "I'm sure he died very confused."

Steve looked impossibly sad. They stood in silence for some time. The roar of the waterfall was quiet in the distance, muffled by the mist.

"We'll put you in cryo," Steve said at last. "I'm sorry for fighting you about it."

"It's okay," Bucky muttered, looking down at his hand on the railing. Then, with a half-smile, he joked, "You gotta stop trying to follow me everywhere, Stevie."

It was a line from their childhood, and Steve brightened immediately. "Heh, next thing you know I'll be asking them to build us a cryo chamber for two."

Bucky laughed at that, a real laugh, and it was so new to him that it almost felt like someone else's.

He was surprised when Steve wrapped his arms around him. Like the laugh, being in a hug felt new and foreign, and the feeling of being contained gave him a slight panicky feeling in his chest.

But Steve was warm, impossibly warm like he always was after they turned him into a superhuman, and Bucky remembered winter nights on the front where the Howling Commandos would sleep in a dog pile with Steve at the center like a furnace. He wrapped his arm around Steve's shoulders.

"And the smell," Bucky said out loud. Wanda heard him. "His smell. I know it sounds weird, but…Of course I knew how he smelled. We had sleepovers almost every night when we were kids, then again when his mom died, then again during the war, and I…" He laughed, burying his face in the corner between Steve's neck and shoulder. "God damn if he doesn't smell exactly the same."

The two men embraced for a long time before Wanda realized that this was the memory. The scene on the train had repeated, over and over, so that Bucky could watch; but this memory was frozen in the exact moment Bucky wanted it to be. The roar of the waterfall, the rise and fall of Steve's breath, his warmth, his scent, this hug—this was where Bucky wanted to stay.

Wanda reached out toward the device with her mind, touched the dark corners—but there were none that bit back, none that snapped. Just nightmares. That was all that was left of HYDRA now, not that it was any small thing. Perhaps Wanda would be back, perhaps she would offer to help with them.

But right now, she was impossibly, painfully tired. And so she took one step back, then two, then three, fading and fading out of mind.

x

"Captain," T'Challa said, and Steve started awake. He looked immediately to Bucky and Wanda, who hadn't moved one bit, but whose eyes were open.

Steve stood. "Bucky?" he asked, coming toward them. "Wanda?"

Wanda stood first, turning to face him, and Steve noticed how bloodshot her eyes were. "I'm going to sleep for a week," she announced, but despite her fatigue, she looked satisfied and proud. "Disturb me at your own peril." And with that, she swept from the room.

"Steve."

He looked down to find Bucky, his restraints undone by T'Challa, with a brightness in his eyes Steve hadn't seen in a very, very long time.

"How do you feel?" Steve asked, hope in his chest.

"Not the same," Bucky said with a smile as he stood. "But that's okay."

And he pulled a surprised Steve in for a tight rib-crushing, one-armed hug.

* * *

 **Author's Note:** The Russian trigger words were obtained by putting the English words into Google Translate, and using Latin alphabet characters. If anyone knows the exact Russian words that were used, send me a PM!

I have literally not written fanfiction since 2010, but goddamn did Civil War inspire me. Somebody needed to give Bucky Barnes a hug. This piece is my hug.


End file.
